Because it was threatening to highjack this thread, I am going to continue the discussion of Oscar Romero here.
In the thread linked above, Satisfying Andy Licious stated the following comments about the slain Archbishop:
And:
Because I wanted to continue this discussion, yet did not wish to highjack that thread, I decided to bring it to it’s own.
I think it’s an interesting topic to discuss-Latin America during the Cold War, the theory of liberation theology, and Oscar Romero’s assasination-which was at the hands of US trained military men. Who, also, were at one point supported by US Senator Jesse Helms.
Some points to discuss:
-who was Oscar Romero and what role did he play?
-the rape and murder of the four US churchwomen in El Salvador
-the events surrounding these killings, and the situation in El Salvador during the 20th century
-the role of liberation theology-is it a valid idea? Is it all a bunch of extremists-or do they have a legit concern?
-What was the US’s responsibility for these events and others?
(other relevent topics could include the Fourteen Families, the School of the Americas and La Matanza of 1932.)
I bring this up mainly because Oscar Romero is a hero of mine. I greatly, tremendously admire the man, and it is people like him who keep me from totally severing ties with my Catholic upbringing. Are there truly still people who believe he was a communist and a threat to democracy?
Okay, for the record, liberation theology, isn’t about what was said here. Liberation theology is different from the traditional position of the Catholic Church in many ways. In most ways, it was considered that Christians would be rewarded for their good deeds in the afterlife and thus focus on the present wasn’t as important. Liberation theology was introduced as a means for the Catholic Church to be sensitive to the millions of poor in latin america. Liberation theology focuses on communal acts of good-will and helping the poor as Jesus would do. Read, “Looking for God in Brazil” for a good idea about liberation theology. Granted it is about brazil, but it gives a good view on the good things and bad things about liberation theology.
I approach this topic from much of the same perspective as you, Guinastasia. I was also brought up Catholic, but have found myself at odds with the Church on many an occasion. I had just about given up on the Church until i began learning about liberation theology. For me, anyway, liberation theology’s commitment to social activism in this world has helped bridge the gap between my personal views and those of the Church–although i still have many problems with it, and religious faith in general.
Before discussing liberation theology in depth, though, I’d like to turn the discussion to some of the historical issues that we were discussing in SAL’s post.
It’s difficult for me to provide an opposing voice, so i hope SAL or someone who shares his views will contribute to this thread. But, to start off, let’s examine why the U.S. contributed military aid and guidance to the Salvadoran government.
This article, written by a USMC officer after the first Gulf War, gives on overview mainly from the military perspective. For the U.S., the success of the Sandinistas in Nicaragua was the worst thing that could have happened. Marxist groups in other Central American countries now had an ally in their own region, and one who could serve as a model for their own revolutionary campaigns. The idea that another Communist-friendly government could be established in Central America was a real problem for the U.S.
The problem with El Salvador was that the Salvadoran government had certainly committed or supported human rights abuses in its attempts to hold onto power. In 1977, for example, a demonstration against electoral fraud turned bloody when government security forces opened fire on the crowd, killing hundreds. Union leaders and priests who sympathized with the protestors were routinely targeted for assassinations. El Salvador’s track record in human rights, in other words, was absolutely abysmal. The Truth Commission’s report is quite damning.
During Carter’s administration, the U.S. had provided military aid to the Salvadoran government, but tied it to political and agrarian reforms. This provided at least a good face to the U.S.'s support for the government, even though one of Carter’s last acts as president was to approve a $10 million aid package to El Salvador, along with American advisors, with no strings attached.
Reagan’s administration, on the other hand…good God, Reagan had no qualms about supporting a repressive government so long as it was fighting against a Communist force. He continued to increase funding for the Salvadoran government and its death squads , while insisting to Congress that human rights were improving in the country. When clear cases of massacres and assassinations were reported, they were typically dismissed as allegations.
A case in point is the rape and murder of the four American nuns. Alexander Haig testified before Congress that the circumstances of their deaths were not clear, but that there was evidence that the nuns had been in a vehicle that had run a military roadblock, and that there was possible gunfire from the vehicle. Jeanne Kirkpatrick even went so far as deny that the Salvadoran government bore any responsibility, and to characterize the nuns as “not just nuns” but as “political activists” working for the FMLN.
The U.S. support for the Salvadoran government throughout the 1980s, even when faced with evidence of that government’s abuses, is one of the most shameful episodes in American history. An understanding of this history is critical to any understanding of liberation theology’s role in El Salvador and in the role of Romero–topics that i’d like to address at greater length in a subsequent post.
This post is a response to Satisfying Andy Licious’s response to one of my posts in the other thread:
Not enough democracy? Then it wasn’t really democracy, except in name. If an elected government is subject to military coups, how stable can it be?
I’d agree that thus far in history, no Marxist government has created a government that in representational terms compares to that of the U.S. or Western European states. But this doesn’t apply to El Salvador, whose government was historically dominted by a corrupt military structure. The Salvadorian government was no more representative of the people than any of the Communist states that you’ve mentioned.
Repressive governments have a habit of staging elections that appear to show an overwhelming support for themselves. Wasn’t Saddam re-elected as president by 99% of Iraq’s voters? But no one would dream of saying that Saddam’s Iraq was a democracy.
I’m not sure which election you’re referring to, but there was a history of electoral fraud in El Salvador–the military certainly skewed the results in 1972, and probably in 1977 as well. These events convinced many Salvadorians that trying to effect change through votes was a futile exercise, and so many turned, as you note, to violent measures. The beginning of a leftist uprising against the government dates back at least to 1972.
I assume that you’re referring to the 1982 elections, which took place without “direct” involvement of the military. But by that time, the uprising was already in full sway.
Of course it does, but those who were assassinated for “speaking” against the government were often not speaking with arms. They were civil rights workers, priests, nuns, union leaders. They were unarmed peasants. The assassination of civilian non-combatants was a trademark of the army and the death squads–they didn’t only kill FMLN guerrillas. I refer you again to the Truth Commission’s report.
On similar grounds, FMLN-sponsored assasinations of non-combatants, including judges, politicians, and so forth, are also inexcusable, and I (like Romero) condemn such actions (BTW, these assassinations are covered in the Truth Commission as well). But i believe the record shows that most of the blood is on the hands of the government, so that is why my outrage is focused more on them than on the rebels.
Agreed. And i would argue that we should hold Sharon’s government responsible for any attacks on civilian populations, and neither should anyone excuse the Palestinian suicide bombers as trying to balance an asymmetrical war. If you kill civilians, you are committing atrocities for which you should be held accountable–no matter what your political agenda is.
[deleted the last point regarding Jesse Helms, which was more relevant to the other thread]
Unilaterally evil? I don’t know if i’d use that term, but i tend to agree with Carter’s assessment of the regime as “one of the one of the bloodthirstiest in [the] hemisphere” (it’s too bad he only came to this conclusion once he was out of office).
As for U.S. support for the Salvadorian government, i cannot see any way to excuse it. Really, i’ve tried to convince myself that maybe we just didn’t know what was going on, which is probably true of most of the American populace. But what can’t be denied is that the Reagan administration and the CIA had full knowledge of the atrocities that were being commited. And they didn’t just turn a blind eye to it; the Reagan administration provided funds and military advisors to the Salvadorian government. They provided military equipment and intelligence. They even trained some of the worst offenders in the School of the Americas.
We knew about Romero’s death. We knew about the rape and murder of four American nuns. We knew about the massacre at El Mozote, and at El Calabozo. And countless other murders. And we continued to give active support to the bastards who did these things!
I’m not saying that i could have offered a perfect solution to the civil war, or a way to prevent the tragedies that happened on both sides. But what El Salvador should have reminded us is violence begets violence, and that by training and equiping the Salvadorian government during that time, we were only perpetuating the bloodshed.
All of the above is history. What does it imply for what our policy in Latin America should be NOW? I haven’t heard anything about “liberation theologians” for a long time – does that mean they’ve gone away? Or is it just because the American media has been paying attention to other things since the mid-'80s? I also note that Marxism does not appear to be the vital force in Latin America that it once was. Castro no longer has even a whisper of influence beyond the shoress of Cuba. The Zapatista rebels in Chiapas do not call themselves “Communists” or “Marxists” or declare themselves allies of Cuba in a greater, hemispheric revolution. They would have, if their rebellion had started during the Cold War.
So what’s the new reality? What kind of legacy have Romero, and the FMLN, and the Sandinistas, left behind that is still alive as a political force in Central America or South America? Is some kind of leftist revolution, by force or by votes, still a future possibility in any of these countries? What about President Chavez in Venezuela? How much does his version of “leftism” owe to Marx, or to Castro, or to Romero? What about the new left-of-center governments in Brazil and Argentina? Does anyone know anything about this?
Yeah, but we were doing most of that training in the 60’s…and we didn’t train them to be death squads…we trained them to be soldiers. I’m pretty sure that the death squads who killed the archbishop were independent of the government…and in fact, I think they also assassinated or attempted to assassinate a government minister.
It looks like this thread is dying down, since Satisfying Andy Licious–the principal voice in opposition to liberation theology in the other thread–hasn’t yet joined it. But, dammit, i’m going to post something about liberation theology anyway.
BrainGlutton, you’re right that liberation theology has kind of fallen off the theological radar screen. It was a huge topic in the '80s, when it was often associated with leftist uprisings in Latin America. As Marxism is largely been discredited as a viable political or economic model, the controversy over liberation theology has also died down.
Does this mean that liberation theology has gone the way of Marxism? Well, i think it is incorrect to equate liberation theology with Marxism (as SAL tended to do). Liberation theology has borrowed from Marxist theory in understanding people as living in concrete, historical situations, and in asserting the need for social activism. One of the key concepts in liberation theology is praxis, which means to work–the idea is that Christians need to work to alleviate the suffering of the poor and disenfranchised peoples of this world. The will of God is manifest in such actions–justice should not be relegated to the afterlife.
So, liberation theologists have often freely borrowed from Marxism, but, as the Protestant theologian Ron Rhodes says,
In other words, Marxism is one of many possible tools for analyzing the problems and sufferings of this world. However, liberation theologists do not necessarily support a Marxist revolution in the Leninist or Maoist sense. I rather think of it in the same terms i do my own discipline of art history. Throughout the twentieth century, many art historians have been influenced by Marxism, and some probably still identify themselves as Marxist. Many more have borrowed, and continue to borrow, from the critical methods that Marx and his followers introduced–particularly in critiqueing the traditional Western models of what constitutes “fine art.” Does the failure of Marxism as a political model invalidate their arguments? I don’t think so, because I believe that Marxism is still useful as a critical tool. I would argue that liberation theology operates the same way–sometimes borrowing bits from Marxism, even in some instances adopting overtly Marxist perspectives–but not necessarily calling for the violent overthrow of the government.
I don’t know enough about contemporary affairs in Latin America as a whole to address properly the question of the “new reality.” I hope any posters we have from Latin America could flesh out this picture. I would speculate, though, that when looking at the political and social picture of the 1980s, Romero probably offers the most suitable model. The violence that was waged by the FMLN and by the Salvadorian army was a bloody dead-end. The leftist cause, at least in El Salvador, is being transformed into a political entity, which voices its concerns through votes instead of with gunfire. Romero’s call for an end to violence is the one that points the way to the future.
Does this mean armed conflict will never happen again? Of course not–it’s still going on in some regions (Columbia comes to mind). The specter of electoral fraud still haunts El Salvador. On the other hand, the political (rather than revolutionary) successes of the left in Brazil and, to a lesser extent, in Venezuela have been remarkable.
But, even with a more peaceful political process, there is still suffering in this world. And for this reason, I believe that liberation theology will always be of relevance.
Sorry i can’t speak too much about specific developments in Latin America today–i hope someone else can offer a better perspective.
In the meantime, i would recommend for anyone interested in the theoretical issues involved in liberation theology this site, which gives a much better account of liberation theology than i can.
All of these Salvadorian officers and paramilitaries received training at the School of the Americas. There is a disturbing pattern among these SOA graduates–i don’t think you can dismiss them all as renegades. Note that the dates of their attendance span the years from the 1960s-80s. They weren’t all trained in the 60s.
What bothers me is that the U.S. continued to provide military funding to the Salvadorian army even when all the evidence showed that the army had been responsible for horrific atrocities. As this report indicates, we were aware of the involvement of the National Guard in civilian massacres. U.S. military advisors trained the Atlacatl Battalion responsible for the El Mozote massacre. Their training doesn’t date back to the '60s–they finished their training in 1981, just months before killing over 500 men, women, and children.
OK, so Reagan’s administration publicly announced their support for Duarte and the PDC as moderates–they could hardly come out supporting the far-right ARENA without losing Congressional support. But the whole time the administration said they were seeking to ensure a stable democracy in El Salvador, they were escalating the amount of military aid that they were providing to the Salvadorian army–in both finances and equipment. This kind of activity went to supporting an army which we knew from past history, and from the training which we gave them ourselves, would stage indiscriminate attacks on civilians, especially human rights activists. And when reports of these massacres emerged, we would invariably deny them, dismissing them as unfounded rumors. Or, we would blame the victims and allege that they were really FMLN activists.
Yes, it’s true that Duarte and the PDC were the closest thing to a voice for moderation within the Salvadorian government. But they were also virtually powerless to stop the civil war. Again, we knew this from CIA reports which indicated that the Salvadorian government only gave lip service to the idea of cracking down on death squad violence, and that their Defense Minister was “personally disinclined and professionally unable to effect a major cleanup within the armed forces any time soon” (be sure to scroll down to see the less excised version of this memo).
And we continued to give arms and military funding to an army whose government either had little control over it, or who tacitly supported its actions? When we were fully aware of what that army had done in the past?
I wish i could believe that neither we nor the Salvadorian government had any control over the army and the death squads. In any case, we didn’t help matters by training their officers and paramilitaries and by continuing to fund their military campaign.
I am late to this, my new job is changing schedules, so I am very busy, I have to give thanks to Guin for bringing this thread to my attention.
As for the new reality, you should know that the FMLN is gaining force in the Salvadoran congress, they had the most seats than any party, until recently, the old party of the former military regimes was allied to the former death squad filled right wing ARENA party, with a block that prevented the left from doing much, recently though, that block was falling apart: the congress voted in favor to reinstate doctors that lost their jobs because of a strike.
Necessary bit of info: a lot of pressure and money has been invested to privatize health care in Latin America, El Salvador is one of the training grounds for the HMOfication of public health in Latin America, the Salvadoran president (ARENA) has vetoed the resolution to reinstate the doctors. I have the feeling that the recent victory of the FMLN, in the mayoral election of the capital city, was a result of the people not liking the privatization of heath care, care that now will be even more out of reach of the poor; they do resent such a move, specially when it was virtually forced on them.
Of course, how far a possible future leftist president could go being under the sights of the son of Bush?
I have a feeling that the current administration doesn’t think much about Central America. Indeed, the cold war is over and the domino theory has been discredited anyway.
However, the case of Venezuela is disconcerting. During the failed coup against Chavez, the US government, through its military linguists at MRSOC at Lackland in Texas, was allegedly intercepting government communications and relaying them on to the oppostion. So, though not taking an “active role”, it was providing aid much like the coup against the democratically elected government of Guatemala fifty years ago. Also, a report by the European Union suggests that the NSA is still monitoring outspoken leaders of the Catholic Church in Central and South America, so perhaps the US government hasn’t forgotten about liberation theology after all.
Basically, from what I’m reading now, it seems that while Romero and the church condemned both sides, they did see that the cause of violence on the left was frustration and desparation-everything had been tried to gain democracy and to stop the opression-and it only lead to more violence.
Not saying it was right, but it was one of those, “You get what you give” things.
Pretty much all the governments of Central America committed human rights violations. So did the rebels trying to overthrow those governments. The US trained some of the government officers, so the allegation is that we are responsible for their abuses. We did not support the rebels, so they are (I guess) responsible for their own abuses (or maybe the USSR or Cubans or whoever supported them).
It is similar to the situation in Nicaragua. The Somoza government was abusive of human rights. So were many of the contras. So were the Sandinistas (ask the Miskito Indians about that). Whose hands are clean?
As far as I can tell, no one. And if we do nothing about the situation, the USSR and Cubans are working like beavers to expand their influence in the region, and they could care less about human rights or democracy.
So we pick the side we think will give us the best chance at creating the least objectionable government. It doesn’t work very well, but see the history of Cuba since the 50s for an example of what we are trying to avoid.
It’s called realpolitik, and it isn’t pretty.
And the fact that Jimmy Carter condemned the very people he supported while President is another example of what a mush-headed mess he was at foreign policy. The silly twit didn’t learn anything from his term in office, except to spout platitudes while the Soviets invaded Afghanistan and the Iranians held our people hostage. And the Sandinistas started building the USSR another friendly port in the New World.
Sometimes there aren’t any good guys to support, and if you do nothing, the bad guys who hate you will win. So the best you can hope for it to try to assist in creating a stable government friendly to your interests, in hopes that eventually their middle class will develop to the point when a majority agrees that democracy is what they want. And Marxists never develop a middle class.
Central America was a mess. Civil wars brewing, oppressive governments, outside agitators, great powers jockeying for position, no traditions of democracy, a huge, disenfranchised underclass and a few corrupt rich, and Romero crying out “Down with the oppressors! Power to the people! God agrees with me!”
Sometimes you can expect things, even if you don’t deserve them.
Romero was working a country where the military was passing out pamphlets saying “Be a patriot! Kill a priest!”
He was NOT saying “God agrees with me”
Central America was a mess because it had been exploited so long. Shodan, have you ever heard of William Walker? What about the United Fruit Company? Sam “Banana Man” Zemurray?
What, precisely, does a semi-nutty 1850’s American filibuster, independent of any government, have to do with current (past 30 years) political messes in Central America?
Ah, true. Anyway, Walker was something of an interesting, if not downright nefarious, historical character. His schemes were so absurd, so tragic (mainly for the people he attempted to enslave), and so senseless that he makes an interesting historical footnote.
Perhaps, more apt than Walker, would be the filibuster movement in general. Although none were endowed with government support (despite tacit approval from the Pierce administration, for example), they were arguably the beginnings of the roots of interest that Americans took upon with Central America. This, as we’re all aware, was essentially a prelude to American intervention in the region throughout the duration of the 20th century, some justified, and others not.
Ah, true. Anyway, Walker was something of an interesting, if not downright nefarious, historical character. His schemes were so absurd, so tragic (mainly for the people he attempted to enslave), and so senseless that he makes an interesting historical footnote.
Perhaps, more apt than Walker, would be the filibuster movement in general. Although none were endowed with government support (despite tacit approval from the Pierce administration, for example), they were arguably the beginnings of the roots of interest that Americans took upon with Central America. This, as we’re all aware, was essentially a prelude to American intervention in the region throughout the duration of the 20th century, some justified, and others not.
By everybody - not simply the US. That is an over-simplification.
The USSR was just as exploitative as the US - possibly more so, and with less concern for human rights or economic development. If the implication is that things would have been wonderful in Central America without US involvement, or that we made things worse, I disagree.
The Third World does not have a good history of social development, even absent US involvement. Witness most of sub-Saharan Africa. In some cases, Nicaragua, US pressure forced the repressive government to actually hold elections, and some semblance of democracy took hold. I doubt the Sandinistas would ever have held elections if the US had taken no interest in the region.
As I said, realpolitik is not a game for the squeamish.